I don't know about animals, but I heard that the bike is the most energy-effecicent means of transport humans normally use (i.e., compared to cars, trams, trains, walking, etc). And I believe that. It's really very little effort to go small distances (a couple kilometers), and you're quite quick, too.
Good point! Another great form of transport is the bicycle. If you only have to go for a few kilometer/miles, the bike is the way to go. It gives you a little exercise, it's fun, and besides it's also cheap and produces very little pollution...
Yeah, let's all use our own, private definitions of words, until we're all convinced we are the only ones who are right, and everybody else is an idiot!
It's time/. gets a Semantics Nazi to assist the Grammar Nazi...
Some of the reviews are also a bit dated. For example in the debian review, Kernel 2.2.17 is called "quite recent" several times, and no mention of XFree 4. It's not easy to keep this kind of list up to date, but it doesn't shed a good light on the quality of the reviews...
It's the same with digital cameras. MegaPixels sell, who cares what crappy lens they slap on it, or how much noise there is in the dark areas of the image? It's really a shame.
And my (proprietary!;-) MiniDisk player that is three or four years old still sounds much better than any MP3 player I have heard so far.
But seriously, I can't see why a filesystem plugin couldn't be statically compiled into the kernel. It's still a plugin from the point of view of the file system, but during its initialization, it registers with the fs and then can be used like any other part of the kernel. I don't know if this is the way they are going to do it, but it would be possible.
Even if every company wanted a billion IP addresses, that wouldn't be a big deal in a 128bit address space... but it would be very predictable. Because of the simpler routing in IPv6, there would be a way to tell which IP addresses belong to whom. So if you can eavesdrop on the network, you can sort out which packets are for the company you are spying on, and then all that's left to do is find out how many connections there were at the same time, and pick the data packets apart.
I am not a security expert, but this idea doesn't strike me as very useful or secure. Maybe somebody with more knowledge of the Internet than talking about "cyber addresses" could add some ideas.
Many of the meetings and decisions in the first week of May concentrated on coping with the torrent of data from a new accounting system that for the first time calculates how much money Amazon makes or loses on each product it sells. The system takes into account the company's cost to ship, the frequency of returns and 47 other factors.
Huh? Come on, they're an online business, they're supposed to have computers and stuff and all kinds of data readily available. And they haven't made use of it yet? Now that is really dumb, no wonder they don't make a profit. Even I can understand that it's a complex problem to sell at low prices and still be profitable. But I also know that it requires some brains to think of a workable solution.
I don't think they even *wanted* permission to do this. The publicity generated by this thing being illegal has a much greater benefit than the campaign itself (these graffitis were seen only by a few people compared to how many read about them).
I guess they had planned this whole thing including fines or community service all along - because easily removable or not, this is against the law.
That's a point I don't understand. They may own any modified rice crops they come up with, but they can't own rice, just because they sequenced its genetic code. At least I hope so...
It's a good thing US IP laws don't apply in Asia...
I agree that there is a lot of corporate research now, much more than there used to be. But that is certainly not the end of academia.
Even for corporations, it is still of importance and value to be able to access information without having to do their own research for every little thing. Research is expensive, and it is becoming ever more so. And especially in genetic engineering, biology, etc the costs are tremendous.
But there is also another reason, which I find more important: If at some point in the future all research is done by corporations, that will be a great loss to all of us. If suddenly *all* the new findings are owned by somebody instead of being released to the public, that will make it impossible to do new stuff on your own (like doing Open Source programming, or setting up a small company to do something). And besides, no meaningful research will be possible any more, because any two companies that do similar stuff will continuously infringe on the other's intellectual property.
So imho, the opposite is going to happen: At some point, the corporations will find out that they are hampering their own work, and will start to either support academic work, or stop patenting everything. (yeah, maybe I am being a little optimistic, but that is really my opinion)
I don't think it's that simple. The Europeans moving to America found a surrounding there that was able to support them easily. There were plants and animals and water and breathable air. Yes, it still was hard work, but at least they didn't have to bring everything with them for hundreds of years.
I am not all that convinced that Mars is such a worthwile goal. Yes, it is a goal in itself. But apart from that, I think the benefits of people settling on Mars are exaggerated.
Even the part about growing semiconductor crystals in space and stuff proved quite useless (or at least not economically interesting), and that was a concrete plan. But for Mars, I haven't seen any ideas like that.
It's typical for computer science people to create an "artist" that is controlled by somebody else's taste, instead of developing a personality and style of its own;-) Yeah, I know it's a bit hard, but it just fits so well into the image...
Does anybody have a clue what "American Gods" is about? What type of book it is? Yeah I could wait for Hemos' review, but I just want to know (just to get an idea).
BTW, there is a very nice personal note on Douglas Adams' death in the journal pointed to in the article above.
1) Well, there are banks that will allow any browser that can set up a proper SSL connection. And their number is likely to increase once more people use browsers other than Netscape and IE.
2) Yeah, blackmail is a pretty strong technical argument, I'm very impressed...
3) And what about a bug free Netscape? Netscape is the only program I have to kill -9 about twice a day. Mozilla can hardly be worse (been some time since I looked at it, admittedly)
So I have to say I agree with the other posters here that say that once Mozilla 1.0 is out, Netscape is dead. It's already dead on Windows (just look at any web stats!), and it's dying on Unix.
No, it doesn't worry me. Because these extensions are a documented part of both DirectX and OpenGL, and they can be implemented in any other graphics card. I don't think nVidia can keep others from doing this (and it certainly isn't in Microsoft's interest to support a monopoly by nVidia). So I am quite optimistic that this isn't going to be a big problem.
I don't understand the problem. Yes, I agree, there is too much hype about the wrong features. And yes, current games don't make use of these features. So what? The card isn't even out yet! (or is it? Well not for long, anyway...)
And for the overclocking and "I've got a bigger cock"-factor... well, you get that with every new piece of hardware.
And AFAIK, not even high-end hardware has features comparable to the vertex and pixel shaders in the GeForce3. They have diffferent stuff you don't find anywhere else (like the color matrix on sgi, or hardware support for the accumulation buffer), but no really programmable hardware at that level.
I doubt there will ever be a GLX driver that will make use of these new shaders on the chip
Well, the glx module *has* to make use of the shaders, otherwise you won't see anything. But you can't make use of the power of these new features without directly programming the card, of course. So yes, hand-coding is necessary, but that is a plus! That's like the difference in power between notepad and emacs... a scriptable graphics card! That's ingenious! So please stop whining that it doesn't go over 120 fps in QuakeIII...
NVidia is basically doing what Intel used to do, play with MHz figures and charge a hefty premium for their latest "new" chip.
Bullshit. The GeForce3 has a bunch of new features that other graphics cards don't even come close to. Ever heard of vertex and pixel shaders? Now you can write your own little program that runs on the graphics card for every vertex or for every pixel drawn. And it's a powerful language, too!
Current games don't take advantage of that, but wait a year or so, and you will change your mind. An area where these things are already used (at least in prototypes) is visualization. It is now possible to do 3D volume rendering etc. at very high speeds using these features.
So comparing the GeForce2/3 to the P133/150 is ridiculous. Drivers are a different matter, though... (they're not crap, they're just not free)
Yes, it's an impressive list. But the reasons why people are bitching is because of the headline. And if "Every BBS That Ever Was" is a US only list, then they really have a good reason. The claim is just plain wrong, so either change the headline or accept the bitching.
I am not from the US, but I guess the main target for this service are people who have to drive long distances and want to have decent radio reception and their favorite kind of music everywhere. Mounting a satellite dish on your car is just so inconvinient;-)
Here in Europe, this kind of service isn't quite as interesting, but in the US (and Canada, for that matter), it makes sense.
Schemas are much more powerful than DTDs. They do not only allow you to specify the structure of the tags in a very flexible way, they also make it possible to do type checking on attributes, make the substructure of a tag dependant on an attribute value, etc.
So schemas are what DTDs never were: A really useful tool to check your XML, not just some simple sanity checks on the coarse structure...
But you really need to read at least the primer (part 3) to appreciate what you can do with Schemas. They are *very* complex.
I would even say this was clearly instigation, and the very least thing that could be done is sue SDMI for that! But I really, really hope that this is going to cause a big stink and maybe even lead to the DMCA being found for what it really is..
Now that's what I'd like: cheap transceivers on every card and device, and short lengths of fiber connecting them up. Bye bye to SCSI, IDE, USB, Firewire...
Yeah, right... Well the first thing they would do is patent wavelengths, so that nobody else can use them. Bye, Bye, interoperability. And then there's polarisation and multi-wavelengths and protocols and... sorry, but I seriously doubt optical connections would be the end of incompatibilities.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about animals, but I heard that the bike is the most energy-effecicent means of transport humans normally use (i.e., compared to cars, trams, trains, walking, etc). And I believe that. It's really very little effort to go small distances (a couple kilometers), and you're quite quick, too.
Good point! Another great form of transport is the bicycle. If you only have to go for a few kilometer/miles, the bike is the way to go. It gives you a little exercise, it's fun, and besides it's also cheap and produces very little pollution ...
Yeah, let's all use our own, private definitions of words, until we're all convinced we are the only ones who are right, and everybody else is an idiot!
/. gets a Semantics Nazi to assist the Grammar Nazi ...
It's time
Some of the reviews are also a bit dated. For example in the debian review, Kernel 2.2.17 is called "quite recent" several times, and no mention of XFree 4. It's not easy to keep this kind of list up to date, but it doesn't shed a good light on the quality of the reviews ...
It's the same with digital cameras. MegaPixels sell, who cares what crappy lens they slap on it, or how much noise there is in the dark areas of the image? It's really a shame. ;-) MiniDisk player that is three or four years old still sounds much better than any MP3 player I have heard so far.
And my (proprietary!
Yes haha very funny ;-)
But seriously, I can't see why a filesystem plugin couldn't be statically compiled into the kernel. It's still a plugin from the point of view of the file system, but during its initialization, it registers with the fs and then can be used like any other part of the kernel. I don't know if this is the way they are going to do it, but it would be possible.
Even if every company wanted a billion IP addresses, that wouldn't be a big deal in a 128bit address space ... but it would be very predictable. Because of the simpler routing in IPv6, there would be a way to tell which IP addresses belong to whom. So if you can eavesdrop on the network, you can sort out which packets are for the company you are spying on, and then all that's left to do is find out how many connections there were at the same time, and pick the data packets apart.
I am not a security expert, but this idea doesn't strike me as very useful or secure. Maybe somebody with more knowledge of the Internet than talking about "cyber addresses" could add some ideas.
Many of the meetings and decisions in the first week of May concentrated on coping with the torrent of data from a new accounting system that for the first time calculates how much money Amazon makes or loses on each product it sells. The system takes into account the company's cost to ship, the frequency of returns and 47 other factors.
Huh? Come on, they're an online business, they're supposed to have computers and stuff and all kinds of data readily available. And they haven't made use of it yet? Now that is really dumb, no wonder they don't make a profit. Even I can understand that it's a complex problem to sell at low prices and still be profitable. But I also know that it requires some brains to think of a workable solution.
I don't think they even *wanted* permission to do this. The publicity generated by this thing being illegal has a much greater benefit than the campaign itself (these graffitis were seen only by a few people compared to how many read about them).
I guess they had planned this whole thing including fines or community service all along - because easily removable or not, this is against the law.
That's a point I don't understand. They may own any modified rice crops they come up with, but they can't own rice, just because they sequenced its genetic code. At least I hope so ...
...
It's a good thing US IP laws don't apply in Asia
I agree that there is a lot of corporate research now, much more than there used to be. But that is certainly not the end of academia.
Even for corporations, it is still of importance and value to be able to access information without having to do their own research for every little thing. Research is expensive, and it is becoming ever more so. And especially in genetic engineering, biology, etc the costs are tremendous.
But there is also another reason, which I find more important: If at some point in the future all research is done by corporations, that will be a great loss to all of us. If suddenly *all* the new findings are owned by somebody instead of being released to the public, that will make it impossible to do new stuff on your own (like doing Open Source programming, or setting up a small company to do something). And besides, no meaningful research will be possible any more, because any two companies that do similar stuff will continuously infringe on the other's intellectual property.
So imho, the opposite is going to happen: At some point, the corporations will find out that they are hampering their own work, and will start to either support academic work, or stop patenting everything. (yeah, maybe I am being a little optimistic, but that is really my opinion)
I don't think it's that simple. The Europeans moving to America found a surrounding there that was able to support them easily. There were plants and animals and water and breathable air. Yes, it still was hard work, but at least they didn't have to bring everything with them for hundreds of years.
I am not all that convinced that Mars is such a worthwile goal. Yes, it is a goal in itself. But apart from that, I think the benefits of people settling on Mars are exaggerated.
Even the part about growing semiconductor crystals in space and stuff proved quite useless (or at least not economically interesting), and that was a concrete plan. But for Mars, I haven't seen any ideas like that.
It's typical for computer science people to create an "artist" that is controlled by somebody else's taste, instead of developing a personality and style of its own ;-) Yeah, I know it's a bit hard, but it just fits so well into the image ...
Does anybody have a clue what "American Gods" is about? What type of book it is? Yeah I could wait for Hemos' review, but I just want to know (just to get an idea).
BTW, there is a very nice personal note on Douglas Adams' death in the journal pointed to in the article above.
1) Well, there are banks that will allow any browser that can set up a proper SSL connection. And their number is likely to increase once more people use browsers other than Netscape and IE. ...
2) Yeah, blackmail is a pretty strong technical argument, I'm very impressed
3) And what about a bug free Netscape? Netscape is the only program I have to kill -9 about twice a day. Mozilla can hardly be worse (been some time since I looked at it, admittedly)
So I have to say I agree with the other posters here that say that once Mozilla 1.0 is out, Netscape is dead. It's already dead on Windows (just look at any web stats!), and it's dying on Unix.
No, it doesn't worry me. Because these extensions are a documented part of both DirectX and OpenGL, and they can be implemented in any other graphics card. I don't think nVidia can keep others from doing this (and it certainly isn't in Microsoft's interest to support a monopoly by nVidia). So I am quite optimistic that this isn't going to be a big problem.
I don't understand the problem. Yes, I agree, there is too much hype about the wrong features. And yes, current games don't make use of these features. So what? The card isn't even out yet! (or is it? Well not for long, anyway ...)
... well, you get that with every new piece of hardware.
And for the overclocking and "I've got a bigger cock"-factor
And AFAIK, not even high-end hardware has features comparable to the vertex and pixel shaders in the GeForce3. They have diffferent stuff you don't find anywhere else (like the color matrix on sgi, or hardware support for the accumulation buffer), but no really programmable hardware at that level.
I doubt there will ever be a GLX driver that will make use of these new shaders on the chip
... a scriptable graphics card! That's ingenious! So please stop whining that it doesn't go over 120 fps in QuakeIII ...
Well, the glx module *has* to make use of the shaders, otherwise you won't see anything. But you can't make use of the power of these new features without directly programming the card, of course. So yes, hand-coding is necessary, but that is a plus! That's like the difference in power between notepad and emacs
NVidia is basically doing what Intel used to do, play with MHz figures and charge a hefty premium for their latest "new" chip.
... (they're not crap, they're just not free)
Bullshit. The GeForce3 has a bunch of new features that other graphics cards don't even come close to. Ever heard of vertex and pixel shaders? Now you can write your own little program that runs on the graphics card for every vertex or for every pixel drawn. And it's a powerful language, too!
Current games don't take advantage of that, but wait a year or so, and you will change your mind. An area where these things are already used (at least in prototypes) is visualization. It is now possible to do 3D volume rendering etc. at very high speeds using these features.
So comparing the GeForce2/3 to the P133/150 is ridiculous. Drivers are a different matter, though
Yes, it's an impressive list. But the reasons why people are bitching is because of the headline. And if "Every BBS That Ever Was" is a US only list, then they really have a good reason. The claim is just plain wrong, so either change the headline or accept the bitching.
I am not from the US, but I guess the main target for this service are people who have to drive long distances and want to have decent radio reception and their favorite kind of music everywhere. Mounting a satellite dish on your car is just so inconvinient ;-)
Here in Europe, this kind of service isn't quite as interesting, but in the US (and Canada, for that matter), it makes sense.
Is there any technical info on XM? I can't find anything on their webpage ...
Schemas are much more powerful than DTDs. They do not only allow you to specify the structure of the tags in a very flexible way, they also make it possible to do type checking on attributes, make the substructure of a tag dependant on an attribute value, etc. ...
So schemas are what DTDs never were: A really useful tool to check your XML, not just some simple sanity checks on the coarse structure
But you really need to read at least the primer (part 3) to appreciate what you can do with Schemas. They are *very* complex.
I would even say this was clearly instigation, and the very least thing that could be done is sue SDMI for that! But I really, really hope that this is going to cause a big stink and maybe even lead to the DMCA being found for what it really is ..
Yeah, right